Christopher Weeks

gardener

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since Jun 24, 2018

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Biography

I steward 20 acres of Cromwell Sandy Loam in the north woods of Minnesota. I clear birch and aspen as needed to plant food sources.

I always have more projects going than I can keep up with which isn't really awesome but I don't know what to change.

I vote for Libertarians and Socialists because they know what it means to have principles and that matters more to me than the exact details of what they believe in. I'm a gun-toting vegetarian. I write code for cash and grow food because no amount of cash will buy real food these days.

I have a wife, two kids, two grandkids, and three cats. I've never had a dog, but I'm thinking about changing that. I hike, garden, read, play games, code, cook, spin and knit, putter, and play at arting.

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Carlton County, Minnesota, USA: 3b; Dfb; sandy loam; in the woods

Apples and Likes

Apples

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Forums and Threads

Recent posts by Christopher Weeks

Food Forest / Roadside Orchard - Unpleasant Drama

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:I had an unpleasant encounter yesterday and it left a bitter taste.

Yeah, I bet that left you feeling betrayed. Like everyone else who isn't in the thick of your emotional response, I hope you find a more productive path forward that you can live with. But I get it!

20 hours ago

meaningless drivel

Making a new garden on turf

I have lots of weeds that coexist with vigorous grasses just fine, but the only thing I've seen that eliminates it (other than tree canopy) is comfrey -- but having it everywhere would probably be even worse than the grass.

Actually, now that I've written that, I sort of wonder. In a small plot at least, it would be pretty easy to control with selective chop and drop. But I'm fighting to eliminate seeding comfrey now and don't think I'm willing to go backward on that.

1 day ago

projects

Glass bottle bricks: Eco friendly colour options

Welcome to Permies, Clare!

When I was a child, we did a school project where we brought a mayonaise or peanut butter jar to school, glued things to the inside that we cut out of magazines and then painted the balance of the inside with some kind of paint. I'm sure in the mid-70s, no thought was given to eco friendliness, but I'm sure you can adapt the process.

But your last line about the tinfoil leaves me unsure that I understand your project.

As for resin, you can collect it on a knife edge from fallen pine limbs, thin it with a solvent -- maybe ethanol(?) and tint it with minerals like powdered lapis or clay or whatever.

1 day ago

natural building

Value of crab apple?

C. Letellier wrote:As for breeding true in mixed orchards mentioned above the answer is NO. If you get seeds from an apple orchard partially pollinated with crab apples, Some of the trees will be from other apples, some will have crab apple traits when fully mature but you can not otherwise tell them from normal apples and finally some will look and taste like crab apples.

This is my main reason for not wanting crabs around. I don't want their superior pollination if that's even a thing because I want to grow bigger, better apples when I plant the seeds.

2 days ago

apples

Permies Poll: Do you Foliar Feed?

Mostly no. I'm pretty skeptical of the claim that plants take in nutrients through leaf pores. On the other hand, spraying compost tea on the leaves, to inoculate with good-guy microbes who can fight off the bad guys, seems like a sound practice. (I mostly don't do that either, but I have the kit to make it in five-gallon batches because my wife got interested and did it for a couple years about a decade ago.) I'm kind of a lazy gardener.

2 days ago

gardening for beginners

Towels as mulch?

I like the idea. I've composted them, but using them as mulch for a year or two first would be more functional. Though -- I wonder with towels whether (at least in my climate) they'd get wet, stay wet, and create too much of a respiration barrier.

2 days ago

mulch

What do oaks, pine, and cedar tell me about this property?

side-topic: Where I live, every county has a GIS land-explorer website where you can look up a parcel and then play with all the layers to learn things about the topography, soil-strata, aerial-picture history, easements, etc. But I know some states make that harder for privacy purposes. If you have something like that and haven't done so already, see what it can tell you.

2 days ago

woodland

Yellowjacket year?

The yellowjackets have started arguing with us when we go to pick raspberries -- which we need to do every morning for the next two weeks or so. So, I got a hose, and shoved it almost into the mouth of their nearby nest that I know about, and turned it on. Boy-howdy do they not like that! It's been running for about 24 hours now. I went out an hour ago to check on it and there's a fat toad sitting in the streaming cold (~42F/6C) water and eating the bugs the come to it. I coined the name yellowsnackets for the toad.

2 days ago

meaningless drivel